Editor’s Note: Good morning. Day 156 of the Great Con II. Israel has brought Iran to heel via complete control of the airspace. The current administration has decided to bomb nuclear sites and join the war. The next steps will tell us whether this continues to be a just or unjustifiable effort, and whether this widens to drag us deeper in. My assessment? Leave room to allow Iranians to decide on their own. There are many democratic-minded Iranians who want their wives and daughters to live freely. Working to topple the government hands-on like we did in Iraq 2003, will be another ego-driven debacle. Meanwhile, a US Senator posted bizarre statements after a deranged American killed and wounded elected officials, and the family grift continues with a new mobile phone.
When I was a kid, I watched as Atari and Intellivision took over family television sets. In high school, I transitioned from a typing class to seeing a computer for the first time in a classroom. In college, I still used white-out for my papers and used the desk phone at the library to call a roommate for a ride. I witnessed the rise of personal tech firsthand from big, bulky hardware with floppy power to the world’s library fitting in your pocket.
We are in another big transition like this, and it is called Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technology that lets computers or robots do tasks normally needing human intelligence—like learning, solving problems, understanding language, or recognizing images. AI now handles jobs such as customer service chatbots, data entry, factory robots, bookkeeping, market research, writing, graphic design, paralegal work, and financial trading. It can analyze data, make decisions, and improve itself over time. It is no longer a distant specter on the horizon. It’s a force that has already opened up new methods of creating and deeply unsettling old ways of doing things. As AI’s capabilities accelerate, the American working class faces a future that could see economic security eroded at unprecedented speed.
Dario Amodei, CEO of the leading AI company Anthropic, recently issued a stark warning. Within five years, AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, with unemployment potentially spiking to between 10% and 20%. This is not the projection of a distant future, but by the end of this decade.
Think about this as the disappearance of the types of jobs our parents made careers out of. The hiring of new graduates by major tech firms has also dropped by 50% since before the pandemic, a decline driven in part by AI’s ability to automate. AI is doing what interns and new grads used to do to get a foot in the door on the way to adulting.
Dealing with change is nothing new in American life. Pope Leo XIV, in his first address as pontiff, drew a direct line between the current AI revolution and the upheaval of the first industrial revolution, which devastated working-class lives and forced a reckoning with questions of justice and human dignity. The difference, as the new pope and tech leaders alike note, is the speed and scale of the coming transformation, something for which there has been no concerted successful effort to ensure that AI is a public good first.
Should there be a minimum access for all? Should AI be free or affordable? After all, AI is a culmination of human knowledge.
First, it is essential to recognize that AI’s benefits cannot be allowed to accrue only to those who already hold power and privilege. Much of what we take for granted today started off with public investment before being spun into private businesses: computer language, energy development, medicines and vaccines, telecommunications, space, and delivery systems.
Treating AI as a public good, not just a private commodity, is not just a moral imperative but an economic necessity.
Universal, free access to AI tools and training would democratize the technology, giving every worker the opportunity to learn, adapt, and compete in the new economy. This could mean investing in public AI infrastructure, supporting open-source platforms, and embedding digital literacy into every level of education and workforce development (one word of caution: let kids be kids throughout elementary school).
Second, the American model of tying health insurance to employment is a recipe for disaster in an era of mass job displacement. Universal healthcare, as seen in much of Europe and parts of Asia, would provide a crucial safety net, allowing workers to retrain, start new businesses, or move between jobs without the existential risk of losing access to medical care. It is no coincidence that countries with robust social safety nets are better positioned to weather technological disruption; their workers have more freedom to adapt and innovate.
Third, the country must make a generational investment in lifelong learning and retraining. The old model—education at the start of life, work until retirement—no longer fits a world where skills can become obsolete in a matter of years. Singapore’s SkillsFuture program, which gives every citizen credits for ongoing training, offers a blueprint for how to build a culture of continuous adaptation. The U.S. could go further, making community colleges, vocational programs, and online learning platforms freely available to anyone seeking to reskill.
Social safety nets must also be reimagined. As AI accelerates job churn, policies like wage subsidies, expanded unemployment benefits, and even universal basic income (UBI) deserve serious consideration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency payments and wage supports helped millions weather an economic storm; similar tools could cushion the shocks of automation and give workers the breathing room to pursue new opportunities.
Crucially, workers must have a voice in how AI is deployed. The White House has previously outlined principles for protecting workers’ rights as AI spreads, but these must be backed by real power: stronger unions, worker councils, and legal protections that ensure AI augments rather than undermines job quality and dignity.
Internationally, the European Union is moving toward comprehensive AI regulation that prioritizes transparency, accountability, and worker rights. Singapore and South Korea are investing heavily in digital skills and public AI infrastructure.
Back to Pope Leo XIV. Maybe his appointment is timely. Invoking the legacy of Catholic social teaching, he called for “courageous dialogue with the contemporary world and loving care for the least and the rejected” in the face of AI’s advance. The challenge, as he and others see it, is to ensure that technological progress does not come at the expense of human dignity and justice.
The stakes could hardly be higher.
If left unchecked, AI is a serious threat to deepen inequality, erode social mobility, and destabilize communities.
If we were a bit more bold in our expectations and work to get Americans to treat AI as a public good, guarantee universal healthcare, invest in lifelong learning, and strengthen worker protections, America can turn this AI reckoning into a new era of shared prosperity.
Will the country rise to the challenge, or will it allow a new industrial revolution to leave its working class behind? If left to the whims of the tech oligarchs of the world, AI will create further division with what is essentially a public good.
What we decide on this will not just affect the future of work, but the future of American democracy itself.
NO BS LINKS OF THE WEEK
If you want more choice and better candidates than what money buys, support an expansion of ranked-choice voting. Take a look at what's happening in New York.
This is a good list of AI models that are available to you. Work to know at least one. It will help you better comprehend the pros and cons of changes to come.
We know we have unique fingerprints. We know the body keeps the score when it comes to pain and mental health. It is still surprising to learn that we can be identified by our breathing pattern.
This is a classic long read from the Atlantic that I find myself thinking about. It is a reminder that as we age, our capacity for a variety of activities will most likely diminish. Instead of getting depressed over it, move to the next level of life. Each level has its tenure, whether it be the learning stage, the doing, or being the wisened old owl.
In one of the examples from the author, he was shocked when he overheard a famous person on a flight droning on about how much he hated his life. What the author took as a lesson was that the man couldn’t get off the hamster wheel. He mixed the doing with the being and couldn’t untangle the two. His identity was so enshrined with his work, he had to always be accomplishing to self-appreciate. It’s a beautiful piece of writing and deep. Whatever stage of life you are in, there is much wisdom to be had in this piece. Take some time to sip and contemplate this one.
This one is powerful. I picked it up from attorney Chuck Hobbs. We’ve just finished up another Memorial Day, and the older I get, the more I find myself thinking of those who sacrificed and died many years ago so that I might have a decent life. Since most of history is written about the faces at the forefront, it is the sons and brothers, the grunts, that are typically lost. This is a nice piece of reporting from ABC News that you will contemplate and admire. Consider this in light of the hateful and self-serving rise of racism we are dealing with now.
I need you to understand how 1984 and Big Brother this is.
This is what countries that fear their people do, yet we are putting this in place for entry to the country that is the hallmark of freedom. If you think this is ok, let’s go back to the beginning of the country, where we have struggled with never-ending methods to differentiate people we “like” (right color, right religion, right amount of money) from those we don’t. This invasion of privacy is yet another test to see how far freedoms can be formed and controlled. Imagine now that other countries begin to put the same expectations in place. Imagine going to Canada or England or France, or Japan, and having to open your phone for the local agent to see, or let’s say other countries request the United States send them anything found on any of their citizens’ phones.
This is not good.
This is an interesting case when it comes to journalism and free speech. If you’ve paid any attention over the last year to the First Amendment, many of our authentic journalists have been forced to leave their normal homes for telling the truth.
In China or Russia, a reporter can be “disappeared” for reporting honestly on the status of the autocrat in control. Here, in the land of the free, you lose your livelihood, not your life. So, free speech comes at a cost. Should he have shared a personal opinion on a public platform? Well, the problem with an autocracy is that everything is shared, but it is always false or with a spin. If you share an opinion that hits too close to the truth, that’s what the problem is.
There is much more to this than the public excuses given. It was only a few weeks ago that Terry Moran interviewed Trump and tried to indicate to Trump that he was showing and supporting a made-up photo. In retrospect, Moran should have continued to push on that issue to demonstrate just how deluded the current leadership is. Here’s the full 40-minute interview you can watch for yourself. Since this administration has purposely downgraded access by any real journalists to the President, rarely do tough questions occur anymore. Moran asked tough questions and told the public what he thought.
It wasn’t wrong.
It will be a long summer. The guardrails for normal response and behavior are broken. We will get through this in time with the rise of personal leadership in various and unplanned places, the stand of a few judges who uphold the constitution beyond any momentary fervor or zealotry, courageous journalists who protect the sacredness of the truth, and some luck.
Above all else, make no excuse to not be a good human.